∴ikura

The broth economy

It wasn’t long ago, that if one was letting a room
out in their home, or driving a cab on the side,
that these stopgaps indicated ‘tough times.’ One
was hurting if one was forced to live by these
terms, just to get by.

Now, it seems, the West has pinned these vantage
points as normal. The work-week hasn’t gotten any
easier for many encamped within the thumb of the
income bell-curve, and arguably, despite ramping
technology, certain aspects of life have become
harder.

Bad gig

A little
1930 essay
by John Maynard Keynes is interesting when one
considers work-life in the 21st century. Always
the Malthusist, Keynes saw population growth
calming & innovation rising allowing people to
shed vast amounts of their work by 2030.
Furthermore, this new-found time would pave way
for a whetted appetite for leisure.

His mis-predictions leave many scratching their
heads in wonder: have we missed something? Or did
Keynes simply misjudge mankind’s trajectory?

Imagine a hypothetical family-of-four, who,
instead of letting out their spare room, but
quite the opposite, had each working parent
with twenty work-hours to spare, in a given week.
Certainly, one could say:

“Wow! This family is living on Easy Street.”

But instead, the market for supplemental income is
the one that’s booming. Trending companies like
Uber & Airbnb provide the means for many whose head
is just at the waterline.

Despite low population growth, a charging stock
market, and technology that continues to kill
nagging inconveniences, America has to ‘gig’ just
to keep up.

Jones’ addiction

What on earth could explain our perpetual
work-force enrollment? It’s tough to say.

One conjecture is that the western world is on a
never-ending merry-go-round of consumerism. This
assumes that we’re all living under a pathological
spell, living in a Girardian mimesistopia, where
having enough to get by isn’t the goal any longer.
In this world, mankind is playing catch-up,
ad infinitum.

There’s no indication that Keynes saw mankind to
be wired this way. Despite having been privy to
the ‘Animal Spirits’ whereby people inject their
emotions into the market, outright lemming
behavior probably would have been an unlikely
character summation for Keynes to bestow on his
fellow Man.

Certainly, whatever the reason, work remains for
nearly all of us.

Real work

Work, as we know it, is roughly two-hundred years
old. Jobs didn’t exist that long ago, and only
farming is a relic from the days before it.
Two-hundred, when placed as numerator over the
large number that is mankind’s evolution, reveals
this: work has only played a mere pittance of a
roll in our overall history.

So while we invent time-saving technologies, yet
can’t abstract away the stopgap that is the modern
work-day — even a little bit — a wonderment
remains: what’s tripped us up in reaching what
should be, and what Keynes predicted, the next
chapter in our evolution?

It may be that we’re in a rut, due to our
insatiable appetites for neighbor-mimesis. It may
be something even more fundamental. But one thing
looks certain: the day where leisure eclipses work
is one far off in the future.